Ugly Ice Cream: Barcelona's Eyescream Watches You While You Eat

An ice cream shop in Barcelona is serving up a googly-eyed creation that stares back at you while you eat.

Eyescream and Friends is a self-serve Taiwanese-style ice cream parlor that brings dessert to life with sugar google eyes. The creators behind Barcelona's Happy Pills candy store, design company m Barcelona, explained the inspiration behind the concept on their website.

With a texture similar to ice cream and sorbet, beautifying the "ugly" ice cream was one of the bigger challenges the design team faced.

"On the other hand, from the aesthetic criteria about local food, this ice cream is not very attractive, but rather ugly: an amorphous mass of ice cream with lots of sauces and toppings falling above and the sides. The ice cream was so so ugly … we decided to make a virtue of it by creating a creative strategy around this," the team explained.

After separating the ice cream from its toppings, "we put two sugar eyes on the top of this ice cream mountain, making it a character-monster that looks you in the eyes and immediately gives it life and personality. The effect you get with a some simple eyes is just amazing," they said.

The name for the store, Eyescream and Friends, was a natural fit. A monster character menu was concocted for each flavor and posted on the door. When the store is open for business, the door swings inside and serves as a menu board for those waiting on line.

Just looking for some water? For thirsty customers, "tears of joy" bottled water is available.